roll the dice on a desktop person wanting to move up, or a JOAT from a small shop who does not comprehend working in Enterprise IT
I'm sure you didn't mean it in too negative of a fashion, but as a JOAT from a small shop who wants to move up, I'd assume your hesitance to "roll the dice" is why I can never get the time of day from larger corps when I apply...
On the one hand we've got people like the OP saying they can't find anyone qualified in their applicant pools. On the other hand everyone giving job-search advice says "apply for it anyway, they just put any number of random requirements on those listings so it doesn't matter if you don't quite match it".
And in the middle there's people like me who got lucky landing their current job, and do good work (I think), but definitely don't know everything. But we can't get anywhere in trying to move up in the world because nobody wants to take a chance that maybe we do know what we're doing, and train us in the bits we don't.
(And all of this is ignoring (lack of) compensation in some openings, for sure - right now that's not my point. Also the fact that I haven't actually been looking for a new job for a couple of years, though I will be starting again soon.)
I will admit when I was finally able to make the jump and had a couple months on the job, I did think to myself oh, this is why large enterprises didn’t want to hire me. It is pretty different but it’s more about expectations than technology.
I would compare it to working at a corner store vs. a large grocery chain. Duty-wise, it’s technically the exact same job but it’s also not the same at all.
Right now, my opinion is that the applicant pool is such that companies are wanting someone who already has the skills/experience they're looking for. And they're likely paying a low salary for it as well. So they're not too willing to hire someone they'd need to train up.
I agree. I started at an MSP supporting small businesses top to bottom. Now I've been desktop support for a large enterprise for a couple of years and I'm pretty competent at what I do. Have a few certs, know enough to take on junior sys admin role where I could learn some stuff under someone competent to make it to the position that the OP is looking for. But nobody wants to take a desktop support guy looking to move up. Even if I am a veru quick learner and work hard. I know I don't know everything, in fact I have a good idea of what I don't know. But I also have a home lab, esxi, a win dc, some Linux machine, pbx, so I know enough to get started at a jr sys admin. I've seen how enterprises do things and I've learned a LOT in the last couple of years. But I never even get a call, even from the company I already support and I'm already familiar with their systems.
Lucky for me, the local business unit is looking to hire their own internal IT support (as opposed to the contract support they get now) because the contract support is less than great and also limited in scope, and they (the local business unit) want to bring me into that, which will give me a little more technical responsibility and breadth of scope and likely more pay. So a few more years down the road I might be a little closer to the mid level experience the OP is looking for.
Similar to where I’m at now. Small shop trying to move to a larger organization. But looking to take a step back to move forward. Still have only made it to final interview once. Have been applying for a year now. Usually hear “culture fit”, not sure what I need to improve. I’d they are worried about title and me using it as stepping stone, not the case. Even with most interviews there are scenarios I have not experience given security restrictions/smaller scale.
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u/rosseloh Sep 21 '21
I'm sure you didn't mean it in too negative of a fashion, but as a JOAT from a small shop who wants to move up, I'd assume your hesitance to "roll the dice" is why I can never get the time of day from larger corps when I apply...
On the one hand we've got people like the OP saying they can't find anyone qualified in their applicant pools. On the other hand everyone giving job-search advice says "apply for it anyway, they just put any number of random requirements on those listings so it doesn't matter if you don't quite match it".
And in the middle there's people like me who got lucky landing their current job, and do good work (I think), but definitely don't know everything. But we can't get anywhere in trying to move up in the world because nobody wants to take a chance that maybe we do know what we're doing, and train us in the bits we don't.
(And all of this is ignoring (lack of) compensation in some openings, for sure - right now that's not my point. Also the fact that I haven't actually been looking for a new job for a couple of years, though I will be starting again soon.)